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Research

Paper

Development of a Scaled-Down Floating Wind Turbine for Offshore Basin Testing

Authors

de Ridder, E-J, Otto, W., Zondervan. G., Huijs, F., Vaz, G.

Date

Jun 8, 2014

Previous model tests showed that a geometrically-scaled turbine generated a lower thrust and power coefficient with a Froude-scaled wind velocity due to the strong Reynolds scale effects on the flow. To improve future model testing, a new scaling method for the wind turbine blades was developed originally by University of Maine, and here improved and applied. In this methodology, the objective is to obtain power and thrust coefficients which are similar to the full-scale turbine in Froude-scaled wind. This is obtained by changing the geometry of the blades in order to provide thrust equality between model and full scale, and can therefore be considered as a 'performance scaling'. This method was then used to design and construct a new MARIN Stock Wind Turbine (MSWT) based on the NREL 5MW wind turbine blade, including an active blade pitch control to simulate different blade pitch control systems.